Navision Maintenance

lakshmivalluru

Hi everybody,

I am posting this as a general chat because i want to know ur views rather than NSc's or an End Users. If an End User is having a developer license, and agrees to update the copy of the Database with NSC whenever they do a change ( changes not related to posting and major functional areas) should the NSC charge for the Maintenance ???

In my view they shouldn't as long as the end user is paying for annual maintenace and takes full responsibility of the developemnt work done.

And also an End user pays maintenance for Microsoft through NSC for the license. I came to know that if the End user has got 100 licenses and droped down to 40 the maintenace cost is still the same :-( should the maintenace be the same??? Can microsoft not cut the Company license once for 5 years or somethign like that???

DenSter

Well I work for an NSC, so my point of view may be biased. 8)

Just think about why your NSC is charging you for this maintenance though. Any time that I get objects from a client with their own development, I check what they did to them to make sure they didn't break anything. Of course this is so that we can charge the client and earn money, but it also protects the client, which is worth some money to most of our clients.

The sad truth is that end-user type developers are often responsible for unintended screwups. This is not to slam anyone, but I've seen things done by our customers in the best of intentions that completely screw up things for the clients. I've seen one of them change the primary key of the G/L Ledger table, I've seen them add fields to the primary key of Journal tables, disable errors in posting routines, and the list goes on. I'd say that 95% of client development is limited to form stuff and the odd report here and there, but the other 5% can have devestating effects, and your NSC is probably looking out for you as well as charging you for the time.

DenSter

Once you add something to your license it's there for good. How can we know that as soon as you get a scaled down license (and probably expect a refund for the part you're not using anymore), that you won't just turn around and start using your 'old' license that has more in it?

CRJH

Nice to see Aston in the States are as customer-focussed as they are in the UK!

Of course it's absurd that you can't reduce your licence without reducing your support fee. For all their faults, Sage have a policy whereby providing you agree in writing that you acknowledge that you will have to buy the extra users again if you want them again, they'll reduce your licence and your maintenance.

DenSter

I disagree with that. That is like buying a house with 10 rooms and getting a refund from the seller just because you only use 5 rooms. I'm sure you'll find lots of things wrong with my analogy , but the point should be clear.

As far as being customer focused, checking customer developed objects actually saves time and money in case you can prevent an unwanted situation for both the customer and the NSC. The customer that changed the primary key ended up spending thousands of dollars for additional development to fix this issue, and we took some of the hit as well. Unfortunately, until you actually run into a disaster like this, you don't know what the cost of a problem would be, and it is impossible to value it like that. I just know that most of our customers have no problem paying for this, as long as we can account for all the time that we bill them.

Now I am curious, you tell me whether or not you think that checking these objects (and charging the customer for it) is customer focused or not, since it seems to me like you are not happy with your NSC. Should we not check these objects? Should we not charge our customers for it when we do? What about the cost when disaster strikes? Is that for the customer who don't know what they are doing, or for the NSC for not preventing it?